Patient Stories

These patient stories are from real patients who have had weight loss surgery. Actual results after surgery will vary with each individual. The opinions expressed by patients should not be taken as medical advice. All surgery presents risk. Weight, age, and medical history determine your specific risks. Consult your doctor to see if weight loss surgery may be right for you.

Body

Transcript: Losing weight together

Zohar: My name is Zohar, I am from Israel, and I live here in Texas.

Stephen: My name is Stephen and I was born in Mexico, but I was raised here in Dallas, Texas.

Zohar: I always had issues with weight. I didn’t really notice it until I matured.

Stephen: My weight was always a struggle as a kid and essentially once your body becomes overweight, it wants to stay overweight. So I was always back and forth with my weight gain. Until through the work opportunity of travelling, one of my passions became running in new locations and different places around the world. So it was a lot of fun getting to know a city, just by running around and seeing things. And that’s along the time when I met Zohar in Israel, during that period in my life.

Stephen: When you start to date someone, you also have the dining experiences and restaurants and simply just getting to know each other. And just through that dating experience we just started to gain weight. We didn’t make as much time as we used to, to be as active as we had to be, in order to be at the weight where we met.

Zohar: I really didn’t want us to do (the) gastric sleeve (surgery). I always said we should try everything that we can to try to lose the weight, maybe we go to the gym and maybe we eat healthy but nothing really worked until we said, “You know what? That is something that we have to do for us.” And we want to live a longer life and we want to have kids in the future, we want to be there for each other. So we decided that’s it, enough is enough.

Stephen: We said, ”We need help. We need a tool.” We’ve done this. We know what it takes to be able to achieve the weight loss that we want, just to simply be healthy. And then I was so proud of Zohar at the time, for how much he did and he helped me a lot of understanding as well. It wasn’t a quick fix. It was a lifestyle change so we can go back to the gym and be healthy, and be able to go to the gym three times a week.

Stephen: One of the things we always wanted was actually bikes, our first date when we were in Israel was actually a really pleasant bike ride. And so we knew that we always wanted to stay active. We enjoy being active. It was just so much harder when we were heavier and we were much more prone to injury when we were heavier.

Zohar: My highest weight was 268. I weighed before the surgery 255 and today I weigh 184.

Stephen: Oh thank you. I’ve now weighed in at 198 pounds, so I’ve lost about 70 pounds so far.

Zohar: Even if I don’t lose weight at all, today, I’m fine. I’m happy. I’m excited that the clothes fit so much better, so I’m ok either-or.

Zohar: So people will say, “Oh my god. You look amazing. What did you do?”. And I’m not lying. I’m telling them, I did the gastric sleeve surgery and I’m very proud of doing that. And you know, other people have experienced, oh you know “You took the quick fix”. And with us nobody ever said that because I already have the answer for that. The answer to that, it is not a quick fix. Going to the hospital and having your stomach cut and all that, it is not a quick fix. You have to learn to eat from the beginning, like a baby, that is not a quick fix.

Stephen: One of the best things about our relationship is that it just, after the surgery, the activity that we do is just so much fun.

Zohar: I’m so proud of our journey.

Stephen: I’m just grateful to now have an ability for my body to know when enough is enough.